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  1. General Overviews
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  3. The constitutive role that history writing took for Swiss identity from the 15th century onward has resulted in a long tradition of historical surveys. The published chronicles of Petermann Etterlin (see Etterlin 1507) and other 16th-century authors combined mythography and historiography in a foundational way, as did the influential manuscript collections of Aegidius Tschudi (d. 1572), (published in the Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte, cited under Political History). Historians of Switzerland recapitulated these authors’ formulations through the succeeding centuries, until the advent of modern historiography generated a series of new national and cantonal histories emerging around 1900, including works by Wilhelm Oechsli, Johannes Dierauer, and Karl Dändliker. While older works remain useful for their narrative detail, modern researchers should begin with the three generations of historical synthesis listed here. The Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte is the most detailed, but generally takes a traditional narrative and intellectual history approach, and preceded the revisionist turn in Swiss political history of the 1970s and 1980s. The Nouvelle Histoire de la Suisse et des Suisses provides much less detail on politics, but adds substantial material on economic and social history. Maissen 2010 is pointillist in approach, but incorporates the current literature and consensus on major issues. Bonjour 1955 is dated, but in English and good on foreign affairs, while Ceschi 2000 covers the often-neglected Italian Switzerland with current scholarship. Finally, the historical atlas in Amman and Schib 1958 is essential for understanding the complex spatial articulation of premodern Switzerland in various aspects.
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  5. Amman, Hektor, and Karl Schib. Historischer Atlas der Schweiz, 2d ed. Aarau, Switzerland: Sauerländer, 1958.
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  7. An essential resource for understanding the complex geographical dimensions of political, economic and religious matters in Switzerland.
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  9. Bonjour, Edgar. A Short History of Switzerland. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.
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  11. Still useful owing to the author’s particular expertise in international history and the history of foreign affairs, as well as the history of Swiss neutrality.
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  13. Ceschi, Raffaello, ed. Storia della Svizzera Italiana: Dal Cinquecento al Settecento. Bellinzona, Switzerland: Edizioni Casagrande, 2000.
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  15. This new volume, with contributions from many scholars active in Italian Switzerland, places their region fully into the flow of the Confederacy’s history.
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  17. Comité pour une Nouvelle Histoire de la Suisse, ed. Nouvelle Histoire de la Suisse et des Suisses. 3 vols. Lausanne, Switzerland: Payot, 1982–1983.
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  19. A group project inspired by the Annales approach sweeping European historiography in the 1970s. Although not as detailed in its narrative elements as the Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte, this work systematically includes demographic and economic history, and is thus an essential supplement to the Handbuch in these areas, as well as conveying a more critical approach to the mythical dimensions of Swiss historiography. Also published in German and Italian.
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  21. Etterlin, Petermann. Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust seltzam strittenn und geschichten. Basel, Switzerland: Mich. Furtter, 1507.
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  23. The first published work dedicated specifically to the history of the Swiss Confederation as a single entity. Etterlin’s chronicle contributed significantly to the circulation of the canonical narrative of development that identified the Confederation’s origins in the three Forest Cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden with the oaths among the three communities’ leaders and the deeds of William Tell. There are a number of modern reprints as well as a digitized version available online.
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  25. Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte. 2 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Verlag Berichthaus, 1972–1977.
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  27. Provides detailed narratives and historiographical context, with exhaustive references to the older literature. Walter Schaufelberger’s chapter on the 15th century strongly reflects its author’s preoccupation with military history, while Leonhard von Muralt’s chapter on the Renaissance and Reformation concentrates on intellectual history from a primarily Protestant perspective.
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  29. Maissen, Thomas. Geschichte der Schweiz: Schweizer Geschichte auf den Punkt gebracht. Baden, Switzerland: Hier + Jetzt, 2010.
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  31. A recent effort to identify critical moments in Switzerland’s history, built up as a mosaic rather than as a systematic narrative. The author’s broad expertise in modern as well as early modern history lends additional authority to the perspectives it conveys.
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  33. Reference Works and Bibliographies
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  35. A rich tradition of reference works exists to support the study of history in Switzerland. For encyclopedia information, the new Historisches Lexicon der Schweiz largely supersedes older resources. Henggeler 1972–2007 systematically documents pre-Reformation and Catholic ecclesiastical institutions, while the Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz are useful not only for art historians, but for many other areas of research. The Bibliographie der Schweizer Geschichte provides running access to both older and current scholarship, including works for wider audiences.
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  37. Barth, Hans. Bibliographie der Schweizer Geschichte. 3 vols. Quellen zur Schweizergeschichte, Neue Folge, part 4: Handbücher, vols. 1–3. Basel, Switzerland: Verlag der Basler Buch- und Antiquariatshandlung, 1914–1915.
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  39. Continued as a serial, Bibliographie der Schweizergeschichte, 1913–, various publishers, eventually issued by the Swiss National Library. All volumes are available online. Comprehensive bibliography of printed sources and interpretations of Swiss history, with both chronologically and systematic listing of contents. The first three volumes offer an invaluable guide to 19th-century publications.
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  41. Die Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz. 121 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 1927–.
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  43. These regionally organized guides to art works in Switzerland from the Neolithic era to the present are a useful resource for historians as well. They include, for example, detailed descriptions of almost all Swiss churches, including their construction history over the centuries, patron saints, and decoration. Major civic buildings are described in historical depth as well. Entries are often illustrated, and include maps when appropriate. Volumes appearing after 1986 are published in Bern by the Gesellschaft für Schweizerische Kunstgeschichte.
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  45. Henggeler, Rudolf. Helvetia Sacra. 28 vols. Edited by Albert Bruckner. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 1972–2007.
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  47. Provides a systematic description and analysis of the institutions of Catholic Switzerland from Christianization to the present. Separate divisions treat episcopal sees, collegiate foundations, Benedictines, Augustinians, Franciscans, Carmelites, the regular clergy, congregations, and lay orders.
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  49. Jorio, Marco, ed. Historisches Lexicon der Schweiz. 13 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 2002–.
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  51. Simultaneously published in French and Italian (eleven volumes in print as of 2012). All languages available free online. A comprehensive encyclopedia of Swiss history, including persons, places, and events. The short articles are generally written by experts in the topic involved, and include brief bibliographical guides.
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  53. Historiographical Studies
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  55. HIST Historiographical studies have been a persistent genre in Swiss history, owing to the importance of history for Swiss national identity. Bonjour and Feller 1979 provides source-by-source descriptions of early modern historians, but its overall view does not challenge the optimistic postwar view of consolidation and consensus. This view gave way in the 1980s to more critical approaches, in Python and Schneider 1992 and most notably in Weisshaupt 1992. The four volumes of essays on historical subfields published in Bott, et al. 2010; Hürlimann, et al. 2011; Nellen, et al. 2012; and Bott, et al. 2013 demonstrate the more nuanced positions that have emerged since revisionism peaked, as well as giving access to the recent literature organized by subfield.
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  57. Bonjour, Edgar, and Richard Feller. Geschichtsschreibung der Schweiz. 2 vols. 2d ed. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1979.
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  59. A consideration of Swiss history writing since the Renaissance, with well-informed essays on most major chroniclers and historians, grouped into regionally and temporally linked groups. While providing quick access to these valuable sources, this work also introduces the larger contours of Swiss historiography in the process.
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  61. Bott, Sandra, Karine Crousaz, Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, Yan Schubert, Daniel Krämer, and Matthieu Leimgruber, eds. Special Issue: Politikgeschichte in der Schweiz: Eine historiographische Skizze. Traverse 1 (2013).
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  63. Special issue of Traverse providing an up-to-the-moment historiographical perspective on the political history of Switzerland from the Middle Ages to the present. Themes include political movements, military history, legal history, and international affairs (including the historiography of Swiss neutrality), with an essay on the political instrumentalization of Swiss history.
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  65. Bott, Sandra, Gisela Hürlimann, Malik Mazbouri, and Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, eds. Special Issue: Wirtschaftsgeschichte in der Schweiz: Eine historiografische Skizze. Traverse 1 (2010).
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  67. Special issue of Traverse providing an up-to-the-moment historiographical perspective on the economic history of Switzerland. Two articles specifically address recent work on the economic history of the late Middle Ages and of the early modern period; broader thematic articles also consider agrarian history, political economy, and public finance.
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  69. Hürlimann, Katja, Frédéric Joye-Cagnard, Mario König, Stefan Nellen, and Daniela Saxer, eds. Special Issue: Sozialgeschichte der Schweiz: Eine historiografische Skizze. Traverse 1 (2011).
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  71. Special issue of the journal Traverse providing an up-to-the-moment historiographical perspective on the social history of Switzerland. Four articles specifically address recent work on late medieval and early modern cities, rural society, sociability and kinship, and social stratification; broader thematic articles also consider immigration, gender, and the state in society.
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  73. Nellen, Stefan, Michael Jucker, Yan Schubert, and Anja Rathmann-Lutz, eds. Special Issue: Kulturgeschichte in der Schweiz: Eine historiografische Skizze. Traverse 1 (2012).
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  75. Special issue of the journal Traverse providing an up-to-the-moment historiographical perspective on the cultural history of Switzerland. Broadly topical articles address issues including the politics of historical representation, religious history, and the histories of political ideas, of discourse, of knowledge, of the body, and of the book
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  77. Python, Francis, and Boris Schneider, eds. Geschichtsforschung in der Schweiz: Bilanz und Perspektiven 1991. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 1992.
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  79. A collection of essays on Swiss historiography produced before the eight-hundredth anniversary of the 1291 pact among Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. The individual essays convey the state of the art, with particular attention to the balance between myth and history in shaping history writing in Switzerland.
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  81. Weisshaupt, Matthias. Bauern, Hirten und “frume edle puren”: Bauern- und Bauernstaatsideologie in der spätmittelalterlicher Eidgenossenschaft und der nationalen Geschichtsschreibung der Schweiz. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1992.
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  83. Weisshaupt most fully explored the critical thesis that the “pious noble peasant” of early modern Swiss rhetoric was primarily an ideological figure concealing late medieval and early modern oligarchy, creating a trope whose articulation had major consequences for later Swiss historiography.
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  85. Journals
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  87. The annotations for Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte/Revue Suisse d’Histoire, Traverse, Zwingliana, and Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte describe the national journals of record. In addition, Switzerland has long produced high-quality cantonal historical journals. While they cannot all be listed here, the journals of the cantonal historical societies—some of them annuals, some of them appearing more frequently—remain an essential resource for most research on Swiss history. Their contents often include substantial source publication, especially for journals published during the 19th century, as well as articles focusing on local events and individuals; the best of the latter also reflect contemporary trends in European historical research
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  89. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte. 1951–.
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  91. Official journal of the national historical association in Switzerland and journal of record for all periods of Swiss history, though early years were German speaking and Protestant in orientation. Continues the Anzeiger für schweizerische Geschichte (1870–1920) and the Zeitschrift für schweizerische Geschichte (1921–1950). Older issues are digitized and available online.
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  93. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte. 2004–.
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  95. A publication of the Catholic University of Fribourg, this journal was from its founding the journal of record for the history of Catholicism in Switzerland, with particular strength in the medieval and early modern periods. Continues the Zeitschrift für schweizerische Kirchengeschichte (1907–2003). Older issues are digitized and available online.
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  97. Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte/Revue d’Histoire. 1994–.
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  99. Founded as a voice for younger historians and for perspectives they felt were neglected, Traverse concentrates on themed issues. Most issues also contain reviews of current books, including books published outside Switzerland. Older issues are digitized and available online.
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  101. Zwingliana: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Protestantismus in der Schweiz und seiner Ausstrahlung. 1897–.
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  103. Founded by the Zurich Zwingliverein and long associated with the Institute for Reformation Studies at the University of Zurich, Zwingliana is the journal of record for publications on the Swiss Reformed tradition. (Posts full issues three years after their publication online.)
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  105. Primary Source Collections
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  107. Swiss historians began publishing documents extensively in the mid-19th century, and have scarcely slowed down since. One focus of publication has consistently been the late Middle Ages and 16th century, conceived as periods of foundation and consolidation of a Swiss nation. Several major series have been under way since early in the 20th century. More recently, digital publication of various archival resources has begun to expand. High-profile works can be found through the cross-library digital platform e-Rara, while other genres of documentation can be accessed through local archive websites. Since no significant central government existed before 1848, students of the early modern period should begin with cantonal rather than national archives in looking for documents, whether online or in their original form.
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  109. Political History
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  111. The centrality of national history and identity in Swiss historiography encouraged early and abundant publication of primary sources illustrating the Confederacy’s formation and operation. The Amtliche Sammlung der ältern eidgenössischen Abschiede (usually abbreviated EA) were explicitly a project of national integration, begun during the divisive 1830s, and focusing initially on a “unified” history of the early Confederacy that Catholics and Protestants, and liberals and conservatives, could agree upon. Selections for the Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte also concentrated on the critical pre-Reformation period and privileged consensus, democratic antecedents, and antityrannical elements. With the publication of Tschudi 1968–2001, one of the most influential early modern historian’s works is accessible in full. Sieber-Lehman and Wilhelmi 1998 samples the broad range of critical or dismissive descriptions of the Swiss that circulated in neighboring regions (and to some extent inside Switzerland) beginning in the early 15th century. The listing here include only the most extensive series: many other sources, both narrative and administrative, have been published, including some in facsimile, and are available for research.
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  113. Amtliche Sammlung der ältern eidgenössischen Abschiede: 1245–1798. 21 vols. in 8. Lucerne, Switzerland: Meyer’schen Buchdruckerei, 1839–1886.
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  115. Invaluable but problematic compendium of the recesses (Abschiede) of the Confederacy’s Diet, including diverse meetings among the cantons. Most documents are summarized, and most volumes include appendices with the text of important treaties. Two different versions of Vol. 1 appeared. Volumes appeared from various publishers. Text available online.
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  117. Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte. Basel, Switzerland: F. Schneider, 1877–.
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  119. Original series 1877–1906; new series, 1906–. Various publishers. The old series includes twenty-five volumes, including chronicles, letters, trial records, and diplomatic documents covering 1300–1800. The new series, with volumes still appearing, has separate divisions for (I) chronicles, (II) documents, (III) letters and memoirs, and (IV) handbooks.
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  121. Sieber-Lehman, Claudius, and Thomas Wilhelmi, eds. In Helvetios—Wider die Kuhschweizer: Fremd- und Feindbilder von den Schweizern in antieidgenössischen Texten aus der Zeit vom 1386 bis 1532. Bern, Switzerland: Paul Haupt, 1998.
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  123. An insightful collection of anti-Swiss texts and images from surrounding regions up to 1532.
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  125. Tschudi, Aegidius, Chronicon Helveticum. Edited by Bernhard Stettler. 22 vols. Quellen zur Schweizergeschichte, Bern, Switzerland: Allgemeine Geschichtsforschende Gesellschaft, 1968–2001.
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  127. During the early 16th century, Aegidius Tschudi collected documents about the Swiss Confederacy in his Chronicon, whose interpretive framework had great influence on later historians. The full republication of his manuscript, along with a comprehensive index and various support material, makes this compilation available for scholarship on various topics.
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  129. Religious History
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  131. Next to political identity, the Reformation has always been a core interest for historians of Switzerland, particularly for Protestants seeking the origins of the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions. A first set of sources to the early Reformation in Switzerland appeared in Egli 1901–1905. International interest in these issues has spurred ongoing publication, often in conjunction with larger German projects such as the Corpus Reformatorum (e.g., Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke) and the Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer. The latter have been translated in part in Harder 1985. More recently, attention has turned to Heinrich Bullinger: Werke. The ongoing publication of consistory records from Geneva (Kingdon, et al. 1996–) and the church ordinances of Zurich and Basel (Campi and Wälchli 2011 and Campi and Wälchli 2012) deepen the primary sources in print and extend them further into the 16th century.
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  133. Campi, Emidio, and Philip Wälchli, eds. Zürcher Kirchenordnungen 1520–1675. 2 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Theologischer Verlag, 2011.
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  135. Presents key church ordinances of the evolving Zurich church from the beginning of Ulrich Zwingli’s activity in the city. The material from the late 16th to the late 17th century is of particular value, as it has hardly been studied compared to material from the church’s first two generations.
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  137. Campi, Emidio, and Philip Wälchli, eds. Basler Kirchenordnungen 1528–1675. Zurich, Switzerland: Theologischer Verlag, 2012.
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  139. This volume collects and annotates diverse church ordinances of the Reformed territorial church that emerged in Basel, which became one of four substantially autonomous centers of the Swiss Reformed tradition. The material from after 1550 is of particular value for the study of post-Reformation church history.
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  141. Bullinger, Heinrich. Heinrich Bullinger: Werke. 24 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Theologischer Verlag, 1972–.
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  143. Comprehensive project to publish the works of Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor as head of the Zurich church. Bullinger’s extraordinary correspondence, with over ten thousand surviving letters, makes this material significant on a European scale. The edition has sections for (I) bibliography, (II) correspondence, (III) theological works, and (IV) historiographical works.
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  145. Egli, Emil, ed. Quellen zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte. 3 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Basler Buch- und Antiquariatshandlung, 1901–1905.
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  147. Including both sources and studies, this series contains material relevant to the Zurich Reformation and its influence across Switzerland and southern Germany. The first three volumes in particular contain valuable primary sources. Volumes 4–13 continues in the series Quellen und Abhandlungen zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig: M. Heinsius, 1912–1942).
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  149. Harder, Leland, ed. Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents. Classics of the Radical Reformation 4. Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1985.
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  151. This English translation of primary source material from Switzerland contains much of the correspondence of Konrad Grebel, one of the first Swiss Anabaptists, as well as related material.
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  153. Kingdon, Robert, Thomas Lambert, and Isabella Watt, eds. Registres du Consistoire de Genève au temps du Calvin. 5 vols. Geneva, Switzerland: Librarie Droz, 1996–.
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  155. The new edition of the vital, and nearly unreadable, manuscript registers of the consistory established in Geneva by Jean Calvin makes this essential source available for a wide variety of research topics.
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  157. Muralt, Leonard von, and Walter Schmid, eds. Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz. 4 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Hirzel, 1952–.
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  159. Key sources to the early history of Anabaptism in Switzerland; this series forms the Swiss section of the more comprehensive series Quellen zur Geschichte der [Wieder-]Täufer (1930–).
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  161. Zwinglis, Huldreich. Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke. 15 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Verlag Berichthaus, 1905–.
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  163. Ongoing project to publish all of Zwingli’s works. Vols. 7–11 publish all of Zwingli’s surviving letters together with a comprehensive index. Publication continues, with exegetical works currently being edited. Early volumes appeared from various publishers; a reprint edition appeared in Munich: Kraus Reprints, 1981.
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  165. Politics of the Swiss Confederacy
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  167. The complex structures and distinctive political culture that characterized the early modern Swiss Confederacy ensure that political history has remained a central concern for historians of the region. In addition, later identification of the period from 1291 to 1531 as the Confederacy’s foundational period, followed by relative stasis until 1798, ensured that debates over Swiss identity always triggered debates over the meaning of events in the founding period. Such debates can be usefully divided into four distinct categories: (1) how the Confederacy was constituted, (2) Swiss national identity and its relationship to mythical figures such as William Tell, (3) the place of war and mercenary service in the Confederacy’s history, and (4) Switzerland as a participant in European diplomacy and political thought. The balance among these issues and the positions taken by later historians have varied, but the historiographical terrain has remained largely stable from the late 16th to the late 20th centuries.
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  169. Constituting the Confederacy
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  171. The list here emphasizes major recent syntheses; the older literature is extensive, and is best accessed via the references found in the Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte or through the annual Bibliographie der Schweizer Geschichte (cited under General Overviews and Reference Works and Bibliographies, respectively). Sablonier 2008 presents the strongest version of the revisionist approach that emerged in the 1970s, criticizing both the formalism and democratic optimism of earlier versions through Peyer 1978, and insisting that the late medieval Confederacy was oligarchic, characterized by intense social and political conflict, and without meaningful democratic elements. While also emphasizing conflict alongside consensus, Stettler 2004, Maissen 2004, and Suter 1997 do not reject the presence of popular participation in the Confederacy’s political life and look instead for dynamic tensions between oligarchy and popular power, or between consensus and conflict. Jucker 2004 provides important insight into the generation of political source material, as well as revising our view of the early assemblies of the cantons in the Tagsatzung, or Diet.
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  173. Jucker, Michael. Gesandte, Schreiber, Akten: Politische Kommunikation auf eidgenössischen Tagsatzungen im Spätmittelalter. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2004.
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  175. Analyzes the communication patterns and document production of the Swiss Diet in the 15th century. A revisionist approach that discounts the existence of any Diet before the 1420s. Jucker clarifies the genres of record produced, knowledge essential to historians who want to avoid misreading the documentation of the Diets.
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  177. Maissen, Thomas. Die Geburt der Republik: Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004.
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  179. Comprehensive study of Swiss political identity and iconography to 1700. Maissen argues that the Swiss were disadvantaged in international negotiation after the 1550s because they continued to understand their Confederacy as a product of imperial law and feudal politics. Only after 1660 did the concept of sovereignty begin to shape Swiss self-understanding.
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  181. Peyer, Hans Conrad. Verfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz. Zurich, Switzerland: Schulthess, 1978.
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  183. Best introduction to the development of the formal structures—alliances, leagues, and compacts—that framed the Swiss Confederacy until 1798. Peyer endorses the view that the Confederacy’s political evolution continued from the early 13th century to the late 15th century, until interrupted by the Italian Wars and the Protestant Reformation.
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  185. Sablonier, Roger. Gründungszeit ohne Eidgenossen: Politik und Gesellschaft in der Innerschweiz um 1300. Baden, Switzerland: Hier + Jetzt, 2008.
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  187. Revisionist account of politics and society in early Switzerland. Sablonier casts doubt on the narrative of confederation beginning 1291 and on the specific charter involved, and emphasizes that local politics into the 14th century were dominated by the regional aristocracy, which used communal assemblies as a way to cement control.
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  189. Stettler, Bernhard. Die Eidgenossenschaft im 15. Jahrhundert: Die Suche nach einem gemeinsamen Nenner. Zurich, Switzerland: Markus Widmer-Dean, 2004.
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  191. A masterful synthesis of the complex 15th-century political history of the Swiss Confederacy, showing how sustained conflict generated forces of cohesion and compromise despite the intentions of the participants.
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  193. Suter, Andreas. Der schweizerische Bauernkrieg von 1653: Politische Sozialgeschichte-Sozialgeschichte eines politischen Ereignisses. Tübingen, Germany: Bibliotheca Academica, 1997.
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  195. Comprehensive study of the Swiss Peasants’ War of 1653, with analysis of both the ideological and economic dimensions of this major revolt. Suter ultimately concludes that the peasants’ populism, seen in their evocations of William Tell, helped block the emergence of genuine absolutism in Switzerland.
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  197. National Consciousness, Myth, and History
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  199. Since the 16th century, Swiss national identity has been perennially under debate and studied intensively in parallel with research into political events and structures as they changed. Reibstein 1949 provides an early postwar reflection on Swiss political identity that illuminates the consensus position found in the works of the historian Josias Simmler. The other works listed here belong primarily to the revisionist movement that questioned the narrative of democratic continuity and consensus since the high Middle Ages. Marchal 1976 and Marchal 1987, and subsequent works by Marchal, demonstrated conclusively that mythology played a central role in the narratives of national identity that emerged after 1450. Despite public criticism, the work of Marchal and subsequent revisionists could not be rebutted. However, as recognition grew that all political cultures include mythical elements, works such as Schmid 2009 and Maissen 2004 (cited under Constituting the Confederacy) moderated the polemical edge found in works like Weisshaupt 1992 (cited under Historiographical Studies). Anyone interested in this issue should read the extensive corpus of publications for general audiences to get the full flavor and import of the debates involved.
  200.  
  201. Marchal, Guy P. Die frommen Schweden in Schwyz: Das “Herkommen der Schwyzer und Oberhasler” als Quelle zum schwyzerischen Selbstverständnis im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1976.
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  203. Marchal’s seminal study reopened debate on Swiss historical consciousness and political identity. By analyzing the myth that medieval Swedes had settled Schwyz, bringing with them an autochthonous liberty unsullied by Roman ties, Marchal showed how myth and history were inextricably intertwined in Swiss political consciousness.
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  205. Marchal, Guy P. “Die Antwort der Bauern: Elemente und Schichtungen des eidgenössischen Geschichtsbewußtseins am Ausgang des Mittelalters.” In Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im Späten Mittelalter. Edited by Hans Patze, 757–790. Sigmaringen, West Germany: Jan Thorbecke, 1987.
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  207. This essay showed how the self-chosen identity of early modern Swiss elites as “peasants” contributed to their distinctive historical consciousness; it helped inspire more radically revisionist studies in the 1990s.
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  209. Reibstein, Ernst. Respublica Helvetiorum: Die Prinzipen der eidgenössischen Staatslehre bei Josias Simler. Bern, Switzerland: P. Haupt, 1949.
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  211. This short study in intellectual history uses Josias Simler’s 1576 history of Switzerland to investigate Switzerland’s republican political culture. Without overtly criticizing the traditional narrative, Reibstein nevertheless shows it to be in part an ideological construction of the later 16th century.
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  213. Schmid, Regula. Geschichte im Dienst der Stadt: Amtliche Historie und Politik im Spätmittelalter. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2009.
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  215. A dense and theoretically sophisticated study of several major late-15th and 16th-century chronicles commissioned by, or dedicated to, urban governments in Switzerland, and of how their creation and use reveal contemporary understandings of how to use history politically.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. War and Mercenary Service
  218.  
  219. The period of Swiss military significance from the 1470s to the 1520s played a large part in traditional narratives of the Confederacy’s history, but interest in this significant dimension of Swiss history declined sharply after the world wars. Schaufelberger 1987 represents one of the last works making major theoretical as well as substantive contributions, although its focus on young men’s associations has not produced sustained resonance. Niederhäuser and Sieber 2006 and Niederhäuser and Fischer 2000 offer the most recent access to research on the major wars of 1436–1450 and 1499; the Burgundian wars of 1475–1476 are best accessed via Stettler 2004 (cited under Constituting the Confederacy), while Gagliardi 1919 narrates the Italian Wars from 1494 to 1516. More recently, as shown in Furrer, et al. 1997 and Romer 1995, interest has revived in the mercenary military activities of the Swiss.
  220.  
  221. Furrer, Norbert, Lucienne Hubler, Marianne Stubenvoll, et al., eds. Gente ferocissima: Mercenariat et sociètè en Suisse (XVe–XIXe siècle). Lausanne, Switzerland: Éditions d’en Bas, 1997.
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  223. Essays on various aspects of the mercenary experience for the Swiss, primarily from a social and cultural history perspective.
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  225. Gagliardi, Ernst. Der Anteil der Schweizer an den italienischen Kriegen 1494–1516. Vol. 1, Von Karls VIII: Zug nach Neapel bis zur Liga von Cambrai 1494–1509. Zurich, Switzerland: Schulthess, 1919
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  227. Still the only comprehensive history from a Swiss perspective of the Italian Wars of the early 16th century. [No further volumes published].
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Niederhäuser, Peter, and Werner Fischer, eds. Von “Freiheitskrieg” zum Geschichtsmythos. 500 Jahre Schweizer—oder Schwabenkrieg. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2000.
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  231. Recent research on the Swiss-Imperial war of 1499. The essays generally revise the thesis that the war brought “de facto separation” from the Holy Roman Empire, recasting it in terms of local feuds in a zone of fragmented authority, coupled with divergent understandings of imperial power.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Niederhäuser, Peter, and Christian Sieber, eds. Ein “Bruderkrieg” macht Geschichte: Neue Zugänge zum Alten Zürichkrieg. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2006.
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  235. New research on the Old Zurich War of 1436–1450 that nearly destroyed the Confederacy.
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  237. Romer, Hermann. Herrschaft, Reislauf und Verbotspolitik: Beobachtungen zum rechtlichen Alltag der Zürcher Solddienstbekämpfung im 16. Jahrhundert. Zurich, Switzerland: Schulthess, 1995.
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  239. Although written from a juristic point of view, this is one of the few studies to consider the lives and context of Swiss men engaged in mercenary service in the 16th century, and provides remarkable evidence about their lives upon their return.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Schaufelberger, Walter. Der alte Schweizer und sein Krieg: Studien zur Kriegfuhrung, vornehmlich im 15. Jahrhundert. Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Huber, 1987.
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  243. Schaufelberger was a seminal figure in Swiss military historiography, celebrating popular military culture and drawing attention to the sociological background of mercenaries and peasant militias in young men’s associations. Originally published as a dissertation in 1952.
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  245. The Swiss Confederacy in the Empire and Europe
  246.  
  247. Through most of the 20th century, research on Swiss diplomacy concentrated on neutrality as a fundamental feature of Swiss international relations. The major synthesis by Paul Schweizer (Schweizer 1895) laid out a narrative of 16th-century roots maturing in the 17th century that was refined and deepened in Bonjour 1965–1976. The manifest benefits of neutrality during the world wars heightened the sense that Swiss neutrality was both a blessing and a model, as in Rappard 1945, which brought a more cosmopolitan Francophone perspective to the issue. As part of the revisionist trend after 1970, historians began reconsidering Swiss neutrality, noting that it had no theoretical place in Swiss international affairs before the later 17th century. Instead, works such as Bolzern 1982 renewed the detailed work of investigating Swiss ties to other powers in the early modern period. Interest in the Confederacy’s place in Europe, seen as a problem in political theory or in constitutional law, remained lively. Mommsen 1958 provides a key reassessment of the cantons’ durable identity as “imperial estates” bearing specific privileges, which lasted through the ancien régime; his perspective is extended into the 16th century in Braun 1997. Holenstein, et al. 2008 updates a tradition of comparing Switzerland as a republic with other European republics, especially the Netherlands. A major reassessment of the issue appears in Maissen 2004 (cited under Constituting the Confederacy), which emphasizes the slow shift from imperial law to sovereignty as the perceived foundation of Swiss statehood.
  248.  
  249. Bolzern, Rudolf. Spanien, Mailand und die katholische Eidgenossenschaft: Militärische, wirtschaftliche und politische Beziehungen zur Zeit des Gesandten Alfonso Casati (1594–1621). Lucerne, Switzerland: Rex, 1982.
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  251. Using the Spanish ambassador Alfonso Casati as his focal point, Bolzern provides insight into the intense diplomatic relations between the Catholic cantons and Spain during a critical period of religious tension and diplomatic insecurity driven by Savoyard demands for restitution of the Vaud.
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  253. Bonjour, Edgar. Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralität: Vier Jahrhunderte eidgenössischer Aussenpolitik. 9 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1965–1976.
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  255. Bonjour presents a wide range of studies on the theme of diplomatic neutrality, searching for its early modern roots in the Confederacy’s admonition for stillstehen (standing aside) for some of its members during internal disputes. The original one-volume edition of 1946 was translated into English as Swiss Neutrality: Its History and Meaning (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1946); Italian, French, and German translations and abridgments exist as well.
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  257. Braun, Bettina. Die Eidgenossen, das Reich und das politische System Karls V. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997.
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  259. An effort to understand the Swiss Confederacy’s place in the imperial plans of Holy Roman emperor Charles V Habsburg.
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  261. Holenstein, André, Thomas Maissen, and Maarten Prak, eds. The Republican Alternative: The Netherlands and Switzerland Compared. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.
  262. DOI: 10.5117/9789089640055Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. Fine articles comparing Swiss and Dutch republican practices in the early modern period, with attention to institutional, legal, and ideological dimensions.
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  265. Mommsen, Karl. Eidgenossen, Kaiser und Reich: Studien zur Stellung der Eidgenossenschaft innerhalb des heiligen römischen Reiches. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1958.
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  267. Detailed study of the legal and ideological position of the Swiss Confederacy in the Holy Roman Empire around 1500, emphasizing the importance of imperial law and privileges to the legal and ideological identity of the XIII ruling cantons.
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  269. Rappard, William E. Cinq siècles de sécurité Collective (1291–1798): Les expériences de la Suisse sous le régime des pactes de secours mutuel. Geneva, Switzerland: Librarie du Recueil Sirey, 1945.
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  271. An optimistic analysis of the effectiveness of federal alliances for mutual security, using Swiss history as a model.
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  273. Schweizer, Paul. Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralität. Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Huber, 1895.
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  275. The first systematic study of Swiss neutrality, a topic that enjoyed lasting interest from the late 19th century to the 1960s. Schweizer’s detailed empirical research helped found the subfield.
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  277. Histories of the Material World
  278.  
  279. The history of politics has formed a persistent focal point for Swiss historiography of the early modern period. Histories of the material world and the economy were often subordinated to political questions, as in detailed studies of the “alpine” way of life that was thought to have formed Swiss identity. Until well into the 20th century, studies such as Weiss 1992 (cited under Economic History) combined folklore, anthropology, and historical research into the Homo alpinus. Owing in part to the high rate of preservation of local records, however, Switzerland appealed to practitioners of Annales-style histoire totale after the 1960s, and became an early site for demographic history, which remained very active through the 1980s and 1990s. Climate history has taken a particular place, beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s owing to worldwide concern about climate change.
  280.  
  281. Demographic and Climate History
  282.  
  283. Annales-style investigations into population, family structure, and mortality thrived early in Switzerland (Bickel 1947) and reached a synthesis based on intensive quantitative methodology in the 1980s (Mattmüller, et al. 1987), in part because of the excellent sources available. Using these same sources, Christian Pfister (Pfister 1984, updated in Pfister 2005) developed an innovative center for climate research in Bern which only gained in importance as climate change became an international concern. A comprehensive approach to the Alps as a human zone of settlement in all its aspects appears in Mathieu 2009, which in this and other works by the author provides access to a broad and comparative range of older literature.
  284.  
  285. Bickel, Wilhelm. Bevölkerungsgeschichte und Bevölkerungspolitik der Schweiz seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. Zurich, Switzerland: Gutenberg, 1947.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. An early synthesis of population in Switzerland on the basis of extensive source research.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Mathieu, Jon. History of the Alps, 1500–1900: Environment, Development and Society. Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press, 2009.
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  291. Magisterial synthesis setting the societies of Alpine Europe in their agrarian, demographic, social, and political contexts. Translated from Geschichte der Alpen (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998).
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Mattmüller, Markus, Fridolin Kurmann, and André Schluchter. Bevölkerungsgeschichte der Schweiz. Teil I: Die frühe Neuzeit, 1500–1700. 2 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1987.
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  295. The most comprehensive effort to determine Swiss population in the early modern period. More recent literature has adjusted some of Mattmüller’s conclusions, but without revising the fundamental picture. No further volumes have appeared.
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  297. Pfister, Christian. Klimageschichte der Schweiz: Das Klima der Schweiz von 1525–1860, und seine Bedeutung in der Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Landwirtschaft. 2 vols. Bern, Switzerland: Paul Haupt, 1984.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. A seminal study, using a wide variety of climatic indicators, for both Swiss and European climate history. Pfister’s research refined understanding of the sudden shift of climate that hit the region in the 1570s, and reframed the significance of the “Little Ice Age” for society.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Pfister, Christian. “Weeping in the Snow: The Second Period Little Ice Age-Type Impacts, 1570–1630.” In Kulturelle Konsequenzen der “Kleinen Eiszeit.” Edited by Wolfgang Behringer, Hartmut Lehman, and Christian Pfister, 31–86. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005.
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  303. An update and interpretation of the overall results reported in Pfister 1984.
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  305. Economic History
  306.  
  307. The economy of premodern Switzerland has been relatively neglected by historians in favor of proto-industrialization and the Industrial Revolution, although a modest stream of new work illuminates various aspects of trade, manufacture, and finance. Bergier 1984 remains the starting point for synthesis; in contrast, Weiss 1992 represents the high quality of scholarship, though tied to a very particular conception of “alpine life,” that marked much of the earlier literature on agricultural history. Specialized studies into urban finance and banking (Körner 1981), migration (Brunold 1994 and Gilomen and Head-König 2000), and related fields hold great promise, though currently appearing largely in the form of article collections, notably in the series Annuaire Suisse d’histoire économique et sociale (see Gilomen and Head-König 2000).
  308.  
  309. Bergier, Jean-François. Histoire Économique de la Suisse. Paris: A. Colin, 1984.
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  311. The broadest general overview of developments in the Swiss economy from the Middle Ages onward. Also available in German.
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  313. Brunold, Ursus, ed. La Migrazione Artigianale nelle Alpi. Bolzano, Italy: Athesia, 1994.
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  315. Essays on the phenomenon of Alpine migration, which profoundly shaped the societies of Switzerland’s Alpine regions.
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  317. Gilomen, Hans-Jörg, and Anne-Lise Head-König, eds. Migration vers les villes: Exclusion—assimilation—intégration—multiculturalité. Annuaire Suisse d’histoire économique et sociale 16. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2000.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. The first ten articles cover various forms of urban migration and their economic and social consequences in early modern Switzerland and neighboring regions.
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  321. Körner, Martin. Luzerner Staatsfinanzen, 1415–1798: Strukturen, Wachstum, Konjunkturen. Lucerne, Switzerland: Rex, 1981.
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  323. Important study of elite, state, and banking finance in one canton. The emergence of lasting fiscal surpluses and the subsequent development of public banking by various city governments were characteristic of the 16th and 17th centuries, helping cement the social and political control of a shrinking and increasingly oligarchic elite.
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  325. Weiss, Richard. Das Alpwesen Graubündens: Wirtschaft, Sachkultur, Recht, Älplerarbeit und Älplerleben. Chur, Switzerland: Octopus, 1992.
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  327. A classic study of premodern Alpine herding, first published in 1941, drawing on anthropological and folklore scholarship as well as on historical records.
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  329. The Cantons
  330.  
  331. Most of the recent monographic literature on early modern Switzerland focuses on a single canton or region, rather than on the entire Confederacy. Both the richness of the surviving sources and the political, social, and geographic particularities of the diverse entities in the Confederacy encourage such a focus. Monograph topics have ranged widely, usually in synchrony with trends apparent in European historiography. The monographs are divided here into groups, though many overlaps exist. Categories include (1) city studies, divided into social and political histories and into studies of urban culture (2) studies of rural society and culture, and (3) comparative and thematic studies. The choice of works to list in these subsections is selective and privileges recent and English-language material; works primarily on religious life in Switzerland are left for a separate category. Before delving into the cantonal literature, in any event, researchers should begin with cantonal historical overviews. A series of major projects after 1990 have produced new multiauthor and multivolume surveys by local and national specialists, so that the historical context for most cantons can be established through a relatively recent and sophisticated work.
  332.  
  333. City Studies
  334.  
  335. The city study has long been an important genre in early modern European history, especially in German-speaking regions. Self-governing cities played vital roles in German and Swiss politics and society throughout the early modern period, making them natural units of study both in historical and archival terms. Of the thirteen cantons of the premodern Swiss Confederacy, seven were city-states, as were the confederal associates Geneva, Biel, St. Gallen, Mulhouse, and Rottweil. In consequence, monographic studies resting on these polities’ often superb archival holdings (which to the present remain the most important sites for research into the premodern period) have been one of the most important and innovative research genres in Swiss historiography.
  336.  
  337. Social and Political History
  338.  
  339. Studies such as Monter 1975 and Guggisberg 1982 combine political, economic, and social analysis to characterize a single city’s distinctive features. In the 1980s, Swiss historians began adapting quantitative methodologies for city studies, often using hard data to question the unity and cohesion that earlier authors had assumed. In Messmer and Hoppe 1976 and de Capitani 1982, the exact distribution of wealth and power in urban centers is elucidated. Vonrufs 2002 brings in the new methodology of network analysis, providing another way to understand the restricted circles of power in late medieval Zurich. Overall, the tendency has been to identify fractures and divisions in urban society that resulted in increasingly unequal distribution of power and wealth after 1450, despite formally republican modes of government.
  340.  
  341. Capitani, François de. Adel, Bürger und Zünfte im Bern des 15. Jahrhundert. Bern, Switzerland: Berner Bürgerbibliothek, 1982.
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  343. Using quantitative analysis, de Capitani analyzes the distribution of wealth and power in late-15th-century Bern. An early and fine example of social history using the abundant late medieval sources available.
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  345. Guggisberg, Hans R. Basel in the Sixteenth Century: Aspects of the City Republic before, during, and after the Reformation. St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1982.
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  347. Collected essays on Basel politics, society, and religious practice by a major historian of the Reformation in Basel and Europe.
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  349. Messmer, Kurt, and Peter Hoppe. Luzerner Patriziat: Sozial-und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studien zur Entstehung und Entwicklung im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Lucerne, Switzerland: Rex, 1976.
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  351. One of the first major studies of a cantonal elite, a genre that produced a number of very useful studies in the 1980s and 1990s on various cantons.
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  353. Monter, E. William. Calvin’s Geneva. Huntington, NY: Krieger, 1975.
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  355. First published in 1967, this is a systematic social history of the city where Calvin settled and developed his ideas on ecclesiastical and civil governance.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Vonrufs, Ulrich. Die politische Führungsgruppe Zürichs zur Zeit von Hans Waldmann (1450–1489): Struktur, politische Networks und die sozialen Beziehungstypen Verwandschaft, Freundschaft und Patron-Klient-Beziehung. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2002.
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  359. Uses network analysis to understand the political dynamics behind the rise and fall of Hans Waldmann, the near-dictator of Zurich in the 1480s.
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  361. Cultural Histories
  362.  
  363. The cultural turn deeply affected historical writing about Switzerland after 1990, but without changing the factors encouraging studies of one city or compact cantonal unit. Women’s and gender history have produced relatively few major works, among which Burghartz 1999 stands out. Multiple methodologies are visible in other works selected here, ranging from hermeneutical approaches such as Wandel 1990, discourse analysis applied to sources as in Schmid 1995, and research reflecting communications theory and the material turn, such as Rauschert 2006, while Sutter 2002 shows the power of large-scale databases derived from urban records in addressing the issue of sociability. As in other historical arenas, the result has been a divergence among research approaches, providing less overlap among studies and fewer shared problematics.
  364.  
  365. Burghartz, Susanna. Zeiten der Reinheit, Orte der Unzucht: Ehe und Sexualität in Basel während der Frühen Neuzeit. Vienna: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1999.
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  367. Using the extraordinarily detailed records of the Basel marriage court, Burghartz emphasizes the continuity in marital and sexual practice that ran behind the major institutional and legal changes introduced by the Reformation.
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  369. Rauschert, Jeanette. Herrschaft und Schrift: Strategien der Inszenierung und Funktionalisierung von Texten in Luzern und Bern am Ende des Mittelalters. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006.
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  371. Uses the changing texts and ceremonial practices surrounding the late medieval charters justifying Lucerne’s and Bern’s autonomy to probe the interactions of text and ritual in constituting political authority in the Swiss communes.
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  373. Schmid, Regula. Reden, rufen, Zeichen setzen: Politisches Handeln während des Berner Twingherrenstreits 1469–1471. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 1995.
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  375. Covering Bern during the same period as de Capitani 1982 (cited under Social and Political History), Schmid applies discourse analysis and communications theory to revise the critical political-social conflict of 1469–1471 in Bern.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Sutter, Pascale. Von guten und bösen Nachbarn: Nachbarschaft als Beziehungsform im spätmittelalterlichen Zürich. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2002.
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  379. Sutter draws on the extraordinarily detailed database created at the University of Zurich, extracted from records of everyday life, to characterize relations among neighbors in late 15th-century Zurich. The records allow investigation of migration patterns, social control, and the solidarities that neighbors deployed to improve their situations.
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  381. Wandel, Lee Palmer. Always among Us: Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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  383. A theoretically innovative investigation of the hermeneutics of poverty and “the poor” in Zwingli’s rhetoric and in the culture of early-16th-century Zurich.
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  385. Rural Society and Culture
  386.  
  387. Both the importance attributed to rural society by Swiss political mythology and the relatively good preservation of rural records (often in the cities that ruled over these areas) have enabled rural studies to flourish. These, too, typically concentrate on a single rural canton or territory. A traditional theme has been rural resistance to urban hegemony (Bucher 1944, Z’Graggen 1999). The 1990s saw works addressing the political culture and institutions of rural cantons, including Head 1995 and Schnyder 2002. More recently, interest in communicative practices has led to several innovative studies, including Hürlimann 2000 and Klee 2006. The compact size and relatively density of records in many Swiss rural areas makes cantonal rural studies comparable in many ways to city studies, displaying the same wide range of questions and methods.
  388.  
  389. Bucher, Erwin. “Die bernischen Landvogteien im Aargau.” Argovia 56 (1944): 1–191.
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  391. Using legal history, this book-length article analyzes the incorporation of conquered subject territories in the Aargau into the emerging Bernese city-state of the mid-15th century, with Bernese control of the legal process enabling the city to overcome tenacious communal resistance in the villages of the Aargau.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Head, Randolph C. Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons: Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton, 1470–1620. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  394. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523335Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Analyzes the political culture of rural communalism in the Grisons and its relation to the political languages of early modern Europe. A German translation was published in 2001.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Hürlimann, Katja. Soziale Beziehungen im Dorf: Aspekte dörflicher Soziabilität in den Landvogteien Greifensee und Kyburg um 1500. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2000.
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  399. An important study extending methods used to investigate urban sociability to a rural context in the early 16th century.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Klee, Doris. Konflikte Kommunizieren: Die Briefe des Grüninger Landvogts Jörg Berger and den Zürcher Rat (1514–1529). Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2006.
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  403. Uses an extraordinary cache of letters from a local bailiff to the Zurich council to deploy discourse analysis and communications theory in understanding the sociopolitical field of a rural bailiwick.
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  405. Schnyder, Carolyn. Reformation und Demokratie in Wallis (1524–1613). Mainz, Germany: Phillip von Zabern, 2002.
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  407. Analyzes rural communalism, politics, and religious change in the upper Valais during and after the Reformation.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Z’Graggen, Bruno. Tyrannenmord im Toggenburg: Fürstäbtische Herrschaft und protestantischer Widerstand um 1600. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 1999.
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  411. Combines microhistorical analysis of the murder of an abbatial bailiff in the Protestant Toggenburg with contextualization in terms of rural resistance and religious politics of the late-16th-century Confederacy.
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  413. Thematic Studies
  414.  
  415. A steady stream of authors has drawn on Swiss sources to address larger comparative questions, or to extend their analysis beyond the local context of their records. These monographs form a heterogeneous group, since the authors orient their studies to a broad range of issues, but they have also been works typically receiving more reception outside Switzerland than local studies. Widmer 1995 demonstrates the potential of studying legal cases as early as the 15th century, giving a vivid picture of legal dysfunction and political fragmentation seen through legal eyes. Puff 2003 draws on the abundant criminal records found in the major Swiss cities, but adopts a hermeneutic approach that addresses discourses of sodomy and their shifting social and political import. Groebner 2002 uses records of gifts and bribes, primarily in Basel, to similar effect, while Teuscher 2012 brings the latest methods in archival and textual studies to several genres of late medieval records, with implications for much of Europe.
  416.  
  417. Groebner, Valentin. Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
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  419. Relying considerably on evidence from Switzerland, this methodologically innovative study combines hermeneutic and network methods in studying the political culture of gifts, rejecting both simplistic notions of “corruption” and the idealization of communal officers’ dedication to the common good of their cities. Translated from Gefährliche Geschenke: Ritual, Politik und die Sprache der Korruption in der Eidgenossenschaft im späten Mittelalter und am Beginn der frühen Neuzeit (Constance, Germany: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2000).
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Puff, Helmut. Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400–1600. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
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  423. Using primarily Swiss sources, Puff investigates “sodomy” from 1400 to 1600 with legal, social, and literary approaches. Despite the crime’s “unspeakability,” early sodomy prosecutions sometimes ended without executions if the accused fit other gender expectations; however, rigorous prosecution increased over the 15th century, and sexual discourses became virulent in Reformation polemics.
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  425. Teuscher, Simon. Lord’s Rights and Peasant Stories: Writing and the Formation of Tradition in the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
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  427. Studies legal documents from Francophone and Germanophone Switzerland to reveal changing deployments of text in political processes. Embodying the “material turn” in documentary history, Teuscher’s study critiques current theories of progressive development from oral to literate cultures, and shows how new techniques of writing and keeping documents undergirded new forms of politics. Translated from Erzähltes Recht: Lokale Herrschaft, Verschriftlichung und Traditionsbilduing im Spätmittelalter (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007).
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Widmer, Andreas. “Daz ein bub die eidgenossen angreif”: Eine Untersuchung zu Fehdewesen und Raubrittertum am Beispiel der Gruber-Fehde (1390–1430). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1995.
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  431. Traces the development of a legal feud over a minor inheritance in the Valais that eventually led to German robber barons’ seizing Zurich and Bernese merchants goods: a marvelous explication of the legal chaos and social divisions of the 15th century in the Swiss regions.
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  433. Religious Life and the Reformations of the 16th Century
  434.  
  435. Because of the central role that Swiss religious thinkers—particularly Huldrych Zwingli, Jean Calvin, and Heinrich Bullinger—played in the Protestant Reformation, and because several branches of the Radical Reformation also had roots in Zurich and its environs, religious history has always played a prominent role in the historiography of Switzerland. Much of the relevant literature in the field has been written outside Switzerland, among which English-language contributions have played a major part. Including the full range of Reformation historiography that touches on Swiss events is neither possible nor necessary here, however. (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles for “John Calvin” and “The Radical Reformation” for relevant bibliography on these topics.) The sources here, after a few standard synthetic works, are included either because they focus specifically on the local context of events also significant in the larger Reformation, or because they represent work by Swiss historians situating local developments within a Reformation context. In Switzerland, confessional perspectives predominated among historians working on Reformation questions well into the 1960s; as a result, there is a lack of comprehensive studies from a nonconfessional perspective, though individual work of great value was produced, such as that collected in Vasella 1996 and synthesized in Pfister 1974. Gordon 2002 provides an updated synthesis of the early Reformation that takes in the last generation of research on the European Reformation. The older literature is best accessed through the Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte (cited under General Overviews). For more recent work, Holenstein 2009 and Engammare 2009 provide acute oversights.
  436.  
  437. Engammare, Max. “Des pasteurs sans pasteur: Historiographie de la Réforme en Suisse romande, 1956–2008.” In Special Issue: Reformation Research in Europe and North America. Edited by Anne Jacobsen Schutte, Susan C. Karant-Nunn, and Heinz Schilling. Archive for Reformation History 100 (2009): 88–115.
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  439. Historiographical discussion of recent scholarship on the Reformation produced in Francophone Switzerland, with extensive citation of material.
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  441. Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002.
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  443. The most accessible history of the early Reformation in German Switzerland in any language, avoiding the intense particularity of local developments. The narrative does not include Calvin’s work in Geneva and does not discuss the later Reformation period or confessional division in the Confederacy, nor does it take Catholic developments into account.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Holenstein, André. “Reformation und Konfessionalisierung in der Geschichtsforschung der Deutschschweiz.” In Special Issue: Reformation Research in Europe and North America. Edited by Anne Jacobsen Schutte, Susan C. Karant-Nunn, and Heinz Schilling. Archive for Reformation History 100 (2009): 65–87.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. Historiographical discussion of recent scholarship on the Reformation produced in German Switzerland, with extensive citation of material.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Pfister, Rudolf. Kirchengeschichte der Schweiz. Vol. 2, Von der Reformation bis zum zweiten Villmerger Krieg. Zurich, Switzerland: Theologischer Verlag, 1974.
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  451. Narrative history from a Swiss perspective; while formally nonconfessional, the writing is generally colored by a Protestant view.
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  453. Vasella, Oskar. Geistliche und Bauern: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zu Spätmittelalter und Reformation in Graubünden und seinen Nachbargebieten. Chur, Switzerland: Bündner Monatsblatt, 1996.
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  455. Collected essays from a major figure in Swiss Catholic historiography. Important historiographically and for its deep knowledge of sources. Vasella was firmly Catholic in his outlook, but argued for the dynamism and complexity of Catholic reform in Switzerland from before the Reformation into the late 16th century.
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  457. Reformation Movements and Swiss Society
  458.  
  459. The Zurich and Geneva Reformations were European events, but they had enormous consequences for the politics and societies of the cities themselves, and for the Confederacy as a whole. As in Germany, the bulk of the historical literature by German-speaking Swiss Protestants focuses on the dramatic decade before 1531. In French-speaking Switzerland, the equivalent period lasted longer, extending up to Calvin’s death in 1564. Discussion of these issues pervades studies in all genres on this period; here, a few outstanding studies integrating Reformation, society, and politics are highlighted. Peter Blickle’s abundant work on peasant community and politics crossed regional boundaries, but Blickle 1992 specifically weaves the Zurich Reformation into the larger regional trajectory. For Geneva, the oeuvre of Robert Kingdom is represented in Kingdon 1995, which probes the local and human changes that Calvin’s preaching and leadership brought about. Local studies of the Reformation in Francophone Switzerland are only now emerging, such as Bruening 2005 and Bartolini 2006. Studies of developments after the key turning points of the respective Reformations are scarcer than studies of the first generation of religious change. Up through the 1980s, most of the literature consisted of detailed local studies about how one or the other church came to predominate. More recently, a burst of scholarship (Campi and Gordon 2004; Campi and Opitz 2007) has focused on Heinrich Bullinger, the successor of Zwingli in Zurich, and to a lesser extent on the second-generation figures elsewhere in the Confederacy, such as Theodore Béze (Backus 2007; Dufour 2006).
  460.  
  461. Backus, Irena, ed. Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605): Actes du colloque de Genève (septembre 2005). Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 2007.
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  463. Recent essays on Theodore Beza, head of the Genevan church after Calvin’s death in 1564.
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  465. Bartolini, Lionel. Une résistance à la réforme dans le Pays de Neuchâtel: Le Landeron et sa région (1530–1562). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Alphil, 2006.
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  467. Analyzes resistance to the introduction of Reformed practices in the Neuchatel town of Landeron, which was able to retain Catholic worship owing to its alliance with nearby Solothurn despite pressure from Bern and Geneva. Bartolini illustrates how political fragmentation rendered clear religious policies or systematic distinctions nearly impossible.
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  469. Blickle, Peter. Communal Reformation: The Quest for Salvation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992.
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  471. Blickle sets the southern branch of the early Protestant movement—exemplified by Zwingli in Zurich—firmly in the context of the communal political culture and society of the region, and argues that the movement’s success depended on the communal orientation of the specific theological arguments found in Zwingli’s work. Translated from Gemeindereformation: Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985).
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  473. Bruening, Michael. Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Verlag, 2005.
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  475. Bruening argues that the difficulties that Calvin faced in shaping the new church in the Vaud, neighboring Geneva but ruled by Zwinglian Bern, affected his approach to spreading the Reformed movement into France as well.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Campi, Emidio, and Bruce Gordon, eds. Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004.
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  479. Articles from leading European and American Bullinger scholars, constituting the first fruit of the post-2000 “Bullinger revival.” Articles cover both Swiss and European aspects of Bullinger’s career as theological and political author as well as head of the Zurich church after 1531.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Campi, Emidio, and Peter Opitz, eds. Heinrich Bullinger: Life—Thought—Influence. 2 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: TVZ Verlag, 2007.
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  483. Proceedings of a major conference celebrating the quincentennary of Bullinger’s birth in 1504. A wide range of articles covers both Swiss and European aspects of Bullinger’s career as head of the Zurich church after 1531.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Dufour, Alain. Théodore de Bèze, poète et théologien. Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 2006.
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  487. A recently updated concise biography of Beza, written by the editor of his correspondence. Dufour includes a discussion of Beza’s work as a dramatist and brings a fresh perspective to Beza’s involvement in the debate over executions for heresy.
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  489. Kingdon, Robert. Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
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  491. Kingdon is not simply interested in adultery and social discipline in this book: rather, his goal is to show how Calvin adapted and showed great flexibility and humanity as the institutions of the Calvinist church tradition were developing in Geneva after 1536.
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  493. Confessional Cultures in a Divided Confederacy
  494.  
  495. The confessionalization thesis articulated around 1980 by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling brought new interest to post-Reformation Switzerland as a site where the confessions existed side-by-side or even entangled with each other (see Schilling 1995). Moreover, the thesis’ attention to social and clerical discipline generated new interest in visitations and consistories, seen immediately in Gordon 1992 and Schmidt 1995. Although criticism of confessionalization predominated after 2000, the thesis awakened lasting interest in discipline, education (Burnett 2006), and the state’s involvement in religious difference (Head 2005). Confession formation is now comprehensively investigated for the Grisons in Pfister 2012. In place of confessionalization, scholars such as Volkland 2005 investigate confessional cultures; historians’ interest in other approaches, such as the spatial, influenced work such as Hacke 2007. Studies of Catholic confessional culture, such as Sieber 2005, have also begun to appear.
  496.  
  497. Burnett, Amy Nelson. Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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  499. Systematic study of university teaching of theology in post-Reformation Basel, identifying major generational changes in the message, audience, and employment of university graduate clergymen.
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  501. Gordon, Bruce. Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zurich, 1532–1580. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1992.
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  503. A detailed study of rural Reformed clergy in eastern Switzerland, emphasizing the issues of discipline and confession-formation under the guidance of the Zurich synod and directed at the rural population subject to Zurich’s political control.
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  505. Hacke, Daniela. “Church, Space and Conflict: Religious Co-Existence and Political Communication in Seventeenth-Century Switzerland.” German History 25 (2007): 285–312.
  506. DOI: 10.1177/0266355407079904Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Hacke uses biconfessional churches in the Aargau to explore the communicative context of religious conflict in post-Reformation Switzerland as expressed by control over, occupation of, or intrusion into sacred spaces.
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  509. Head, Randolph C. “Fragmented Dominion, Fragmented Churches: The Institutionalization of the Landfrieden in the Thurgau, 1531–1630.” Archive for Reformation History 96 (2005): 117–144.
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  511. Traces the evolution of ecclesiopolitical compromises and conflicts in the biconfessional Thurgau after 1531, arguing for a series of accommodations that generated new areas of conflict, but shaped by the legal and political context of a divided Confederacy.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Pfister, Ulrich. Konfessionskirchen, Glaubenspraxis und Konflikt in Graubünden, 16.–18. Jahrhundert. Würzburg, Germany: Ergon, 2012.
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  515. A systematic study of confessional practice in a biconfessional Swiss region, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Schilling, Heinz. “Confessional Europe.” In Handbook of European History 1400–1600, Vol. 2. Edited by Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, 640–670. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995.
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  519. A clear summation of the confessionalization thesis, which emphasized parallel political developments in regions adhering to Catholicism, Lutheranism, and the Reformed faith, rather than stressing conflict between them. Switzerland’s religious plurality and the unusual political structure of the Confederation encouraged tests of Schilling’s model using Swiss evidence.
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  521. Schmidt, Heinrich Richard. Dorf und Religion: Reformierte Sittenzucht in Berner Landgemeinden der Frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1995.
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  523. A comprehensive analysis of social discipline in Bernese country parishes, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the evidence. Argues for the relative success, but also considerable limits, that such discipline faced.
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  525. Sieber, Dominik. Jesuitische Missionierung, priesterliche Liebe, sakramentale Magie: Volkskulturen in Luzern, 1563–1614. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 2005.
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  527. One of the first major studies of postconfessional religious practice in a Catholic region of Switzerland. Argues against the confessionalization thesis by showing the multiple forces resisting the kind of top-down establishment of religious and social control the thesis hypothesized.
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  529. Volkland, Frauke. Konfession und Selbstverständnis: Reformierte Rituale in der gemischtkonfessionellen Kleinstadt Bischofszell im 17. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005.
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  531. A cultural and ritual studies approach to biconfessional life and confessional culture in the Thurgau subject territory of the Confederacy. Volkland seeks to deessentialize confessional categories and reveal the fluidity and situational context of confession, mixed marriage, and public religious rituals.
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  533. Arts and Literature in Early Modern Switzerland
  534.  
  535. The modest size of most Swiss cities, the lack of royal and noble patronage, and, later, the iconoclastic leanings of the Swiss Reformed movement mean that Switzerland was not, on the whole, a major center of artistic and literary production during the Renaissance and Reformation. Several artists and authors of note did emerge, and recent studies have also begun investigating the popular arts and their role in the Confederacy. The following studies, divided into Visual Arts and Literature, concentrate on well-known figures in particular relation to their Swiss context, and also privilege work in English. Investigations of Swiss artistic culture can also draw on the extensive cataloging by region found in the major series Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz, cited under Reference Works and Bibliographies.
  536.  
  537. Visual Arts
  538.  
  539. The period of political dynamism and economic growth that took place in Switzerland from the late 15th to the early 16th century also produced a number of Swiss visual artists of note. Annotated exhibition catalogs such as Menz and Wagner 1979 and Müller 2001 highlight the flexibility of such figures, who also served as authors and as political actors. Probably the most famous and successful visual artist from Reformation Switzerland was Hans Holbein the Younger, whose Basel years are portrayed in Müller, et al. 2006. The distinctive genre of illustrated chronicles is represented in Schilling 1981, which includes a facsimile of the 1513 illustrated Swiss chronicle of Diebold Schilling. See also Schmid 2009, cited under National Consciousness, Myth, and History. Later, an important baroque tradition of artists emerged in the Ticino, from where generations of artists and architects emigrated to Rome, while Ticinese stucco masters plied their trade from Barcelona to St. Petersburg. An important figure who retained strong ties to his homeland was Giovanni Serodine (Contini and Papi 1993). Swiss Humanists were also important collectors as well as producers of visual material: one of the largest such collections belonged to Basilius Amerbach the Younger (1533–1591), whose Amerbach-Kabinett is analyzed in Landolt, et. al. 1991.
  540.  
  541. Contini, Roberto, and Gianni Papi. Giovanni Serodine 1594/1600-1630 e i precedenti romani. Lugano, Switzerland: Fidia edizioni d’arte, 1993.
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  543. Exhibition catalog on the Ticinese-Roman painter Giovanni Serodine in the context of his father’s career in Rome as a stucco artist and his own associations with the school of Caravaggio, and emphasizing his major late work for the parish church of Ascona (TI), the Coronation of the Virgin.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Landolt, Elisabeth, Basilius Amerbach, Hans-Rudolf Hagemann, et al., Das Amerbach-Kabinett: Beiträge zu Basilius Amerbach. Basel, Switzerland: Offentliche Kunstammlung Basel, 1991.
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  547. Basilius Amerbach (1533–1591) was the scion of a family of humanists that flourished before and after the Reformation. Basilius gathered his father’s correspondence and collections, including Erasmus von Rotterdam’s estate, into a systematic collection, documented in conjunction with this volume of essays in Das Amerbach-Kabinett, 5 vols. (Basel, Switzerland: Offentliche Kunstammlung Basel, 1991).
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Menz, Cäsar, and Hugo Wagner. eds. Niklaus Manuel Deutsch: Maler, Dichter, Staatsmann. Bern, Switzerland: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1979.
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  551. An exhibition catalog on this energetic painter and author of polemical plays, who took a leading role during the debate within Bern during the 1520s about religious adherence and the decision to join the Reformation. See also Ehrstine 2002, cited under Literature.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Müller, Christian. Urs Graf: Die Zeichnungen im Kupferstichkabinett Basel. Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett. Katalog der Zeichnungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, Vol. 2B. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe Verlag, 2001.
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  555. Urs Graf (c. 1485–1528) was a goldsmith who served repeatedly in Swiss units during the Italian wars. His extraordinary drawings capture the thrill and the horror of early-16th-century warfare, depicting soldiers in looted finery with whores, and piled-up bodies on the battlefields. Müller’s catalog brings together over four hundred drawings.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Müller, Christian, Maryan W. Ainsworth, Stephan Kemperdick, et al. Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515–1532. Munich: Prestel, 2006.
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  559. Before painting English politicians and royalty, Hans Holbein the Younger (b. 1497/98–d. 1543) spent productive years in Basel. Originally from Augsburg, he carried out commissions with his father in Lucerne in the 1510s. He traveled extensively in the 1520s before settling permanently in London in 1532.
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  561. Schilling, Diebold. Die Schweizer Bilderchronik des Luzerners Diebold Schilling 1513. Edited by Alfred A. Schmid. Lucerne, Switzerland: Faksimile Verlag, 1981.
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  563. Large and lavishly illustrated chronicles were a distinctive feature of Swiss official book design in the late fifteenth century. This annotated facsimile exemplifies the genre. Schilling’s Lucerne chronicle placed the city in the center of a larger history of the Swiss Confederacy since its foundations, accompanied by numerous colored illustrations.
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  565. Literature
  566.  
  567. As was the case for painting, literary creativity peaked in Switzerland early in the 16th century, when several notable humanists flourished alongside a vibrant tradition of popular dramas that went far beyond traditional mystery plays. Aschmann, et al. 1983 traces the career of Heinrich Loriti of Glarus (b. 1488–d. 1563), known to the Humanist world as Glareanus, who after studies in Cologne and Basel earned the title of poet laureate with a Latin poem in praise of Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I. His contemporary Jochim Watt “Vadianus” (b. 1484–d. 1551) of St. Gallen left a similar intellectual career to lead his home city into the Reformation movement. His work as a historiographer is discussed in Gamper 2006. Popular theater before and after the Reformation has been a very active area of research, represented here in Greco-Kauffman 2004, Ehrstine 2002, and Keller 2008, discussing Catholic Lucerne, Reformed Bern, and Reformed Zurich, respectively. Throughout the early modern period, Latin and High German remained the languages of literature and indeed of almost all writing; surviving texts in the Swiss dialects are extremely rare.
  568.  
  569. Aschmann, Rudolf, Jürg Davatz, Arthur Dürst, et al. Glarean 1488–1563: Beiträge zu seinem Leben und Werk. Mollis, Switzerland: Ortsmuseum Mollis, 1983.
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  571. Heinrich Loriti (Glareanus) was notable as a poet and for his works on musical harmony. After recognition as poet laureate in 1512, Glareanus composed a topographical poem, “Helvetia Descriptio,” in 1514 that associated the ancient Helvetians with the early modern Confederacy, an important development in Swiss national mythography.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Ehrstine, Glenn. Theater, Culture, and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523–1555. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
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  575. Centered on the theatrical works of Nikolas Manuel Deutsch (see also Menz and Wagner 1979, cited under Visual Arts), this study traces changing theatrical responses to church reform before, during and after the 1520s in Bern.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Gamper, Rudolf, ed. Vadian als Geschichtsschreiber. St. Gallen, Switzerland: Sabon-Verlag, 2006.
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  579. Joachim Watt (Vadianus), scion of the trading house of the Von Watt, led the city in declaring for Zwinglian doctrine and expelling the city’s lord, the abbot of St. Gallen, in 1528. This volume focuses on Vadian’s historical works, which contributed to the emerging Swiss historiographical-mythographical tradition.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Greco-Kaufmann, Heidy. Leben, Leiden und Tod in der Luzerner Theatertradition des 16. Jahrhunderts. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2004.
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  583. The challenges of the Reformation initially dampened enthusiasm for traditional mystery plays in Lucerne. With the emergence of a Catholic Reformation, however, civic drama began to flourish again, as illustrated in city secretary Renward Cysat’s Spiegel dess vberflusses vnd missbruchs (1593), also edited by Greco-Kaufmann (Zürich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2001).
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth. Jakob Ruf: Leben, Werk und Studien. 5 vols. Zurich, Switzerland: Verlag Neuer Zürcher Zeitung, 2008.
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  587. Jakob Ruf (c. 1505–1558) immigrated to Zurich from Constance to become the city’s surgeon and eventually chief doctor. He also composed several dramas, including one on the William Tell story. This comprehensive examination sets his accomplishments firmly in the milieu of the post-Reformation city.
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